


Wear your heart on your cheek (But never on your sleeve)

by Faye_Claudia



Series: Take my Hand (We'll make it, I swear) [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adam is Lisa, Alternate Universe - Supernatural (TV) Fusion, Flashback, Keith is Sam, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Pre-Season/Series 01, Shiro is Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:07:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25570330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Faye_Claudia/pseuds/Faye_Claudia
Summary: Shiro has rules about being a hunter. Simple stuff, they make his life easier. Never go back to the same town, let another hunter handle it if you’ve already been there; never leave Red with valet. Patience yields focus. Always carry two firearms, pack one with rock salt. Never get caught without ID. Don’t ever, ever fall in love. Never tell the same lie twice, always keep your story straight.Shiro drills these into Keith relentlessly. The kid's prone to forgetting them, or just straight-up ignoring them. What Shiro will never tell Keith, though, is that he’s broken every single one of those rules, all in one single case. And his name, the catalyst for it all, was Adam.
Relationships: Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Keith & Shiro (Voltron)
Series: Take my Hand (We'll make it, I swear) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1818694
Kudos: 9





	Wear your heart on your cheek (But never on your sleeve)

Shiro has rules about being a hunter. Simple stuff, they make his life easier. Never go back to the same town, let another hunter handle it if you’ve already been there; never leave Red with valet. Patience yields focus. Always carry two firearms, pack one with rock salt. Never get caught without ID. Don’t ever, ever fall in love. Never tell the same lie twice, always keep your story straight.

Shiro drills these into Keith relentlessly. His little brother is naive, hopelessly so. Full of optimism even in the face of all that teen angst he never left behind. Keith falls in love like he's jumping into a swimming pool, less a fall, and more a dive, with his eyes screwed shut and holding his breath, headfirst. They argue about it a lot, about how Keith wants to give monsters chances, how he wants to reason with ghosts, let vamps go if they don’t drink human blood. Keith’s broken every single one of Shiro’s (Iverson’s) rules, and Shiro gives his little brother shit every time, can’t believe Keith would sleep with a werewolf, let the vampire nest go, forget his shotgun, rush in headfirst like an amateur, go out to eat and let someone else park Red. Keith grits his teeth and bitches about breathing room and overbearing brothers and no one knew the guy was a werewolf until after the fact (which, fair, but Keith’s still a monster fucker and Shiro’s never letting that one go).

What Shiro will never tell Keith, though, is that he’s broken every single one of those rules, all in one single case. And his name, the catalyst for it all, was Adam.

Keith was away at Garrison U, and Shiro was 24, hustling pool in a bar after what should’ve been routine salt-and-burn; his dad was half-way across the country doing something else (Iverson was always cagey around this time of year) and Shiro felt free, and happy and victorious. Unencumbered by responsibility and enjoying a couple of beers as he managed to swindle a couple of hundred bucks from over-confident blue-collar rednecks who’s biggest issue in life was hiding their mistresses from their wives. Shiro thumbed through the money, pocketed it, and sat down heavily at the bar, smiling at the cute guy behind the counter, who winked at him and handed him another beer “on the house”.

Life was good. Adam was the bartender, and despite the fact that he lived in a small conservative town barely visible on a map in Kansas, Adam happily pressed Shiro against the door of the men’s room with heavy kisses and wandering hands.

Life was less good in the morning when Shiro woke up to an aching head and the news that there had been another killing, despite the fact that he’d taken care of the body yesterday. Adam, however, handed him a travel coffee mug and told him to go save some lives, (“do all FBI agents look this good fucked out?”) kicking Shiro out with a kiss and his number. It felt almost domestic, and Shiro decided that the suddenly more complicated case was worth the chance of seeing Adam again. Oddly, Shiro was happy.

But happiness breeds complacency; and complacency gets you killed. Or gets you caught with only one gun – the one not packed with rock salt – when facing down the vengeful sister of the spirit Shiro had taken out before. Of course, they were twins, and of course, Shiro hadn’t done enough research, and of course, his other firearm – the one Shiro needed - was in Adam’s apartment, probably kicked under the bed or something. Along with his current ID. Fuck.

Shiro scraped through that case by the skin of his teeth, aided by lady fortune with the find of a lead pipe in the kitchen of the abandoned house. (There was a Clue joke in there if Shiro was willing to think of that harder, but as it stood, he had another grave to desecrate, and a cute guy to call). Later, Adam called Shiro, blackmailing him into a proper date in exchange for his very important belongings back (Don’t get me wrong, I like a hot one night stand as much as the next guy, but I’m far too curious about you to let you go that easy, Agent).

Shiro gave in and took Adam to one of the nicer (read: not grungy) steakhouses in town, and with a heavy heart, handed over the keys to Red to be parked by a skinny teenage girl in a red uniform with the restaurant’s logo on it. Adam wanted to be a pilot and was saving enough money to get out of his hometown. Neither of them wanted something permanent, and both of them knew this couldn’t last, stuck in the liminal spaces people in their early twenties usually found themselves in, although Shiro considered his life in a perpetual state of flux, perhaps not liminal in the same sense as Adam’s life, who had eventual goals and destinations, where Shiro saw nothing but cheap motels and asphalt roads for however long he lived (hunters had always had a short life expectancy, after all). They did find something in each other though, something beautiful and rare for Shiro’s emotionally detached nature, and something surreal and unheard of to Adam, who’d spent most of his life closeted and unaware that his sexuality could provide him with more than just secretive hookups in men’s rooms with guys who never wanted to know or remember his name.

Shiro stuck around for a week, and came back two weeks later on the excuse of ‘passing through”. He stayed for nearly a month. He shared too much with Adam; about how he missed his brother, about how he sometimes hated his mom for leaving them, even if she didn’t choose to, and how the guilt of that ate him alive at night. In return, Adam shared about his grandfather’s acceptance of him, of his stories about being a fighter pilot during the second world war, and how Adam knew that while he never wanted to actually be a soldier, he definitely wanted to fly. He made fun of Shiro’s fear of flying, and told Shiro that his scar and leather jacket and height didn’t do shit to make him intimidating after he’d opened his mouth.

“You’re a teddy bear in the body of a Greek god,” Adam would tell him, and Shiro would blush and stutter until Adam kissed him deep and forceful.

Adam told Shiro he loved him about three months into whatever it was they had. It was the last time they spoke.

**Author's Note:**

> I am making this up as I go along. Also, case fics based on actual episodes are hard, so have another backstory. 
> 
> 100% unedited as always. Title is taken from How to Be a Heartbreaker by Marina and the diamonds.


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